Our Amazon Kindle DX Graphite, aka KDXG, has arrived and we're busy putting it under the macro lens. Amazon claims the new 9.7" Kindle has 50 percent higher contrast, and we're inclined to agree. If e-ink didn't look eerily enough like paper, it's one step closer now. On the Kindle Graphite, the increased contrast is more noticeable in the blacks: it has blacker blacks. The gray background isn't significantly lighter than other traditional e-ink readers like the nook, Sony Reader Pocket Edition PRS-300, the Kindle 2 or IREX DR800SG.

Notice here how inky black Virginia Woolf's hair looks. If you've got a Kindle DX or Kindle 2, you're familiar with Ms. Woolf as a screensaver and you know her hair never looked so richly black. The black background behind the "Slide and release..." text at the bottom is also darker.

How about text? The written word is also much darker, and you get the feel of a semi-slab font with a standard weight font. In our 100% macro crop of the nook and Kindle DX Graphite, you can see the difference, though the nook actually is using a semi-slab font (Amasis medium). We took a photo with the ebook readers side-by-side, then cropped out the middle to ensure that the exposure and setting were identical.

Note: Macro shots use strong magnification; think of it as putting the display under a microscope. This means you'll see a level of detail here that you won't see with the naked eye-- text no longer looks perfect under magnification. That doesn't mean it won't look sharp when viewed with your own two eyes for reading.

Using the macro 100% crop we could see that the e-ink display on the IREX DR800SG and to a much lesser extent, the nook, had what looks like ink bleed (you know, in traditional print where the ink bleeds and spreads into the paper creating less crisp edges. There is less bleed at all on the Kindle DX Graphite. After a few years of e-ink display technology stagnation, it's wonderful to see such useful real world improvement.

Above: a macro shot of the nook (left) and KDXG. Below: a macro shot of the IREX DR800SG (left) and KDXG.

While the KDXG is easily more readable, especially in low light than the last gen Kindle DX and other e-ink readers, we still aren't at the printed book level that Amazon mentions. Yes, there's very good contrast and deep blacks but the background is still light gray. If you already own a Kindle DX, it's probably not worth the upgrade, unless perhaps like me, you read in cave-like rooms. But if you're looking for your first large screen e-ink reader, the KDXG is looking like a fine choice at Amazon's new $379 price. It's available now from Amazon.

We'll be posting a video review tomorrow and a full written review in the coming days. In the meanwhile, please feel free to post questions.

There is zoom (fit to screen, 150%, 200%, 300% and actual size). You must select a section of the page using a moving rectangle, then click the joystick to zoom into that portion. Not ideal for fluid reading but it helps if small sections of text are otherwise too small to read.

Though you didn't ask, I know some folks are wondering and hoping there might be TOC support in PDFs, but alas there's no TOC or active links in PDFs .

Sorry, I've clarified my post above. There is zoom, but this zooms in on a section of the page using a selection rectangle. You can pan around using the joystick, but it's not something that's conducive to linear reading. We'll show it in our video.

I don't have great eyes and I haven't needed to change the font size or zoom to read text in PDFs. For complex diagrams, zoom is helpful.

Hmm... the DXG is having problems with several of my PDFs. Some bring it to a grinding near halt, one shows as a single page (blank) document rather than a 500 page book and others are fine. The PDF that basically crashes the Kindle offered a font size change option, while the ones that don't crash it have only zoom. Looks like the font size change is the by-product of a bug and not a feature. The way things are going, it's going to take a while to work through the PDF feature. But zoom is definitely a feature and not a bug .

It feels and is thinner and lighter. It's no lightweight compared to a 6" ebook reader but I don't get tired arms when reading for an hour. The width and length are about the same, so like the iPad it's more suited to a gear bag than a purse or man-purse .